Erwin Bumke

Born in the small town of Stolp in the Prussian Province of Pomerania (now Słupsk, Poland), he had a family that was middle class. His father was a doctor and his mother a factory owner's daughter. His brother Oswald Bumke (1877–1950) became a noted psychiatrist.

After studying law in Freiburg, Leipzig, Munich, Berlin and Greifswald, Bumke began his career as a judge in Essen. In 1907, he assumed an office in the Reichsjustizamt, the precursor of the later Reich Ministry of Justice. The same year, he married Eva von Merkatz (1873–1947), the aunt of the later Minister of Justice Hans-Joachim von Merkatz. The couple had two sons, both of whom were killed in World War II. Bumke himself served as an officer in World War I, achieving the rank of Hauptmann (Captain).

After the war, Bumke joined the German National People's Party (DNVP). He quickly rose to the head of Department II in the newly-established Ministry of Justice, which was concerned with criminal law. He prepared, among other things, the Reichstag drafts for a new Strafgesetzbuch penal code in 1927, which never saw the light of day. In 1930, Bumke became president of the International Criminal Law and Prison Commission.

Upon the resignation of Walter Simons in 1929, Bumke was appointed as head of the Reichsgericht by President Paul von Hindenburg. Under Bumke's leadership, the court declared valid on 25 October 1932 the temporary removal of the Prussian state ministers' authority by a Reichskommissar, enacted by emergency decree (see Preußenschlag). According to an amendment to the Weimar Constitution passed in December 1932, Bumke would have been the deputy of the Reichspräsident as head of state, if the latter suffered a handicap or death, but no such incapacitation on his part was ever shown to be the case and the regulation was plainly ignored when Hindenburg died two years later.

As a national conservative, Bumke, like Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner and State Secretary Franz Schlegelberger, retained his office after the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933 and was made responsible for co-ordinating jurisprudence in the Third Reich. In July 1933, he became a SS Patron Member. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and was awarded the Golden Party Badge the next year. Bumke became responsible for several unjust and racist verdicts: as presiding judge of the 3rd criminal division, he ruled under the Rassenschande paragraphs of the Nuremberg Laws. He also was involved in retroactive legalizing the "euthanasia" murders of the Aktion T4 programme in 1939–1941. His term in office was extended by the personal decree of Adolf Hitler in 1939.

During the last days of World War II, on 20 April 1945 (Hitler's birthday), two days after US Army forces entered Leipzig, Bumke committed suicide.

• Hat die erfüllte Resolutivbedingung dingliche Kraft?, Greifswald dissertation 1896
• Deutsches Gefängniswesen. Ein Handbuch, Berlin 1928.
• Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz und Strafprozeßordnung. Mit Nebengesetzen in der vom 13. Januar 1927 geltenden Fassung; Textausgabe mit einer Einführung in die Vorschriften der Novelle vom 27. Dezember 1926, Berlin 1927.
• Zwei Entscheidungen zu Art. 48 der Reichsverfassung, Berlin 1932.

• Kolbe, Dieter (1975). Reichsgerichtspraesident Dr. Erwin Bumke. Studien zum Niedergang des Reichsgerichts und der deutschen Rechtspflege. Karlsruhe. ISBN 3-8114-0026-6.

• Newspaper clippings about Erwin Bumke in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW